If We Strive To Create An Equal Relationship With Nature Will She Help Us Find Balance Everywhere?
What would happen if, instead of imagining that we are superior to the natural world, we can create an equal relationship with nature? Could we create an equal relationship with nature in order to bring balance to the environment and support us in finding balance in ourselves?
We spend so much time in our thoughts, working out how to solve problems, working out how how to fix things. Moreover, we might even sometimes get caught up in the idea of how clever we are, and this can sometimes translate as superiority over this planet, mother nature and every other living creature on it. Perhaps we imagine we can control it. Or maybe we imagine that we can change it. What would happen if we let go of these ideas and worked with nature, seeing her as an equal, to find balance in ourselves and balance in the environment.
Many have tried to educate us about co-creating with nature: the Mayans, the Aborigines, the Maoris, the Native Americans and other Indigenous people. What is it that prevents our ability to hear? We fight for what we perceive to be equality in every area of our lives. So, what stops us fighting for equality with mother nature and everything under her umbrella?
If we don’t stop taking without giving back, it’s quite possible we’re going to destroy everything, including ourselves. Every year our need and greed continues to create imbalance in the ecosystem. Will all this temporary convenience have been worth it?
Oceans of Plastic & Toxicity
Scientists think about 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean every year. That’s the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers according to the National Oceans Service.
According to the International Union For The Conservation of Nature (IUCN), “the most visible and disturbing impact of marine plastics are the ingestion, suffocation and entanglement of hundreds of marine species. Marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fishes and turtles, mistake plastic waste for prey, and most die of starvation as their stomachs are filled with plastic debris.”
Now, even if we can’t muster the motivation to care about that, perhaps we can consider the fact that micro-plastics have entered the food chain and we’re consuming them, regularly. Our children are literally drinking and eating them.
We have an island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean and it’s the size of Europe. We have the technology to turn plastic into oil, and yet, that island of plastic is still there. How is this not a priority? Are we going to use money and oil prices as an excuse every single time?
We’re still manufacturing with plastic and, apparently, it’s just too convenient to stop. When I talk to people around the world many say “if the governments ban plastic it will have a catastrophic impact on the economy, we will all suffer.” Does that mean it’s better to poison everyone and everything than to withstand the transitional challenges of change?
Is Genetic Modification Really The Solution To Everything?
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. There are 17 SDGs in total. These goals set out some wonderful intentions, and yet, sometimes “good intentions pave the way to hell.”
Seemingly, as Climate Change positions itself at the forefront of our minds, the output of brainstorms and think tanks appears to be a decision that genetic modification is a far-reaching solution for almost everything.
The New Zealand public company AGResearch, for example, makes genetic selections for sheep that reduce methane emissions by up to 40%.”
Genetically Modified Solutions Are Everywhere
According to this article from the Genetic Literacy Project, GMO plants now occupy 11% of cultivated areas in the world. It tells us how “many scientists have tackled the problem of pollution from livestock, for example by modifying the diet of animals or their microbiota in order to reduce the bacteria that produce fermentation in the stomach.
The New Zealand public company AGResearch, for example, makes genetic selections for sheep that reduce methane emissions by up to 40%.”
Are we missing the obvious solution?
Is It Better To Change The Environment, Rather Than Create A Balance?
In addition, Burger King is now loving lemongrass. That’s right. In July, Burger King announced that it was adding lemongrass into their cow feed in order to reduce methane outputs.
What’s more, in 2019, an Israeli company called Aleph Farms, created the first meat in space via 3D printing. Impressive, and very clever.
Mind you, have we considered the methane output emitted by the human population? As we panic about ageing populations and nations start to pay people to reproduce, do we ask ourselves whether it’s appropriate?
Is Eating Meat All The Time Necessary?
Furthermore, how is it that after spending all this money, we haven’t asked the obvious question. You know, “are we at a point in our life experience where it’s more sensible to STOP mass-farming animals for food?”
Of course, many don’t believe we can stop eating meat every day, I mean where would we get our protein? It’s amazing how the thousands of articles out there teaching us which vegetables are high in protein, (some even have a higher protein content than meat), are so easily ignored.
Nonetheless, if we want to eat meat, can we reduce our consumption to once per week or once per month so that we can drive a different way of livestock farming?
At first glance, this approach may seem inconvenient for humans, and yet there must be a way to strike a balance. The pace of human life this century, brainwashes us into a NEED for a life of convenience. Is it possible we can set an intention of BALANCE rather than convenience?
Are We More Like Magpies than we think?
Just because we can, does it mean we should? We like clever, we like new, and we like shiny. Perhaps we have more in common with the magpie than we think!
It would be reasonable to suggest that the general consensus among our species is that it’s much more fun to work with the cutting-edge of technology than the existing challenges we’ve created on this planet.
We’re Fascinated By The New
Seemingly, it’s much more interesting to search for life on other planets, modify the perfect balance of nature and change the genes that made us who we are, than it is to solve the ‘old-world’ problems. We’ve taken our focus away from proven techniques such as sustainable farming, education and infrastructure that could allow us to solve the current challenges we’re facing on this planet, right now.
What stops us from being fully present? Specifically what prevents us from teaching relevant life skills to the generations after us who will face the boiling and toxic planet we leave behind us? Precisely what stops of from creating an equal relationship with nature?
This year we discovered a form of kelp seaweed off the coast of Scotland that has survived for 16,000 years. Can we learn from this and start to adapt to our environment, rather than trying to change it?
Do We Imagine Our Language Dictates A Higher Level of Intelligence?
So, what is it, really, that drives this sense of human superiority and sense of higher intelligence? Do we feel more intelligent because we can speak in tongues and vaguely understand one another?
If only we could have realised, with all this thinking, that we’re the only species that hasn’t learned the universal life language of sound, just as all the other living things on this planet have.
Dogs are capable of learning up to 1,000 words in our languages, and reading our emotions without words. I wonder how many of their words we have learned.
We’ve only just started to consider the possibility that we could understand the language of whales and dolphins. We’re now decoding whale song, and we needed AI to get us there.
Maybe we’re not as clever as we think we are, after all.
Does The Idea of Control Make Us Feel Safe?
As we sit here, in ‘pillage and plunder’ mode, we’re becoming sicker and sicker. We’re obese, we’re cancerous, we’re depressed, we have more allergies than you can shake a stick at, and we’re popping synthetic drugs like candies.
We assign labels to ourselves like products in a supermarket, we’re anxious, stressed to the point of heart disease, terrified about money and jobs, and. yet we want more of it. How is this possible?
What If Control Is An Illusion?
If we feel like we’re in control, if we know we’re at the top of the food chain, does this make us feel safe? Are we feeding our own insecurities, as well as our bodies?
Could creating a balanced and more equal relationship with nature help us to heal?
In addition, we’re so overwhelmed by data and information, can we even decide what is real or not anymore? Can we create enough silence to even hear our truth?
Is it our conscience catching up with us that creates this sickness? Do we feel powerless to make a change? If we worked in harmony with the oceans, the plants and the animals, could we rediscover our own health?
Meanwhile, mother nature just gets on with following a purpose, we float around as if we’re addicted to the clever and complex, feeding our needs both physical and emotional.
Is It Easier To Pretend We Don’t Know?
So, as we sit in our deckchair and with our drink bedecked with plastic umbrellas, surfing our plastic phones, basking in the ever-increasing temperatures, tanning ourselves on the forest fires. Are we enjoying ourselves? Are we having fun? As we begin to find it just a little bit harder to breathe, as we watch those giant trees falling to the ground, as we watch the lung capacity of the world reduce and reduce, are we feeling good?
As we travel to the world’s most naturally beautiful locations we congratulate ourselves on having enough money to see it. Do we turn our heads as the boats that take us there evacuate our trash into the sea? Do we really not know or are we just looking the other way when it happens?
We trap animals and then train them be behave as we want them to. Even our pets are becoming a convenient love radiator to serve our needs rather than the other way around. We get excited over breeding them to cosmetic perfection and have little concern about taking them away from their mothers after just a few weeks, or the impact of over-breeding. How is it possible that animals only have sentience in a few countries, according to the law?
Is Creating An Equal Relationship With Nature Even Possible?
What will it take for us to change? Is it even possible for us to see the oceans, the trees and the animals as equals rather than something that belongs to us? It’s hard to know since we’re so determined to change the environment rather than adapt our own behaviour. Perhaps, we will only change when our lives are immediately threatened.
Change is always a difficult concept for people to swallow. It’s easier to retain a feeling of control, a higher level, safer for most. So, I wonder, if we were to engage from a different perspective, could it change our minds?
What would happen if, the next time we engaged with anything from nature (the ocean, a tree, an animal) we asked ourselves, “if this were my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my life partner or my child, would I do it?”
Some Uncomfortable Ideas Worth Exploring
These ideas may shock you, and yet, allow them to sink in for just a moment, because it’s an interesting thought process. If we treated humans as we treat nature, would we still act in the same way? If we really think about these ideas, could we create an equal relationship with nature?
Moreover, would we watch in silence and acceptance if other people acted in the same way?
If humans were our only food source and as a result we had to kill, would we take the ones who had lived a long life, or the ones who were young because they taste better and they’re easier to catch?
Also, would we move into the countryside and then kill any people who were on the land that we wanted to buy, just because we wanted to live there?
Would we feed lemongrass or another alternative to our children to reduce their methane output? Or would we rather just have a genetically modified child that minimised output from birth?
If we wanted to eat a nice pâté, would we force feed a human for 17 days and then slaughter it for its liver and delight in the quality?
Would we dump all of our garbage onto our father while he was sleeping and just hope that he takes it away in his next outward breath?
If our grandfather broke his leg, would we put him to sleep because it’s just too pricey or difficult to treat?
If our grandmother was minding her own business on the bottom of the ocean floor – where she’d been for some 80 years, would we whip her out and boil her alive because we couldn’t work out how to kill her first?
Environmental Relationships
So, what if our family was living on a piece of land that we wanted to use for farming, would we just burn them and their house to the ground so we can have what we want?
Would we blast our mother with toxic gas and then when she told us she couldn’t breathe just say “Never mind Mum, you’ll work it out.” as we dance out the door?
We have to wonder, would we trap thousands of babies, from birth, in a room with no sunlight, no ability to move, force-feed them with antibiotics, while they wade around in their own excrement? And then after just a few weeks would we think ooooh “now they look tasty – let’s get them on the conveyor belt and lop their heads off”?
You might be thinking, “well that’s ridiculous, you’re talking about humans, people, my family, my tribe.”
So be it.
When Did Nature Stop Being Part Of Our Tribe?
Perhaps we can ask ourselves, “at what point did mother nature, the oceans and the animals stop being our tribe? At what point did we stop believing we could have an equal relationship with nature?”
Surely, if we choose to work with nature, rather than forcing her to be our slave, we might actually find balance in our outer world. This approach might even bring a greater balance to ourselves. Do we want to be a silent witness to our own demise?
Or, is it time to learn from the Indigenous people how to work in harmony and equality with everyone and everything around us? Can we find an equal relationship with nature?
Could working with the intention of finding harmony with our planet help us solve disharmony in the human race?
What do you think?
How Do I Operate Support Myself In Letting Go Of Control?
If you’d like a reminder that we all come from love and we can find balance by learning to be a part of life in nature, to co-exist and have an equal relationship with everyone and everything in this world, you might enjoy engaging with my 5-Minute Morning RANTRA on operating beyond my ego and moving into HARMONY.
When we learn to maintain momentum in our emotions we can release them quickly and we have a much greater awareness of the triggers. The journey of learning to drive our emotions is like finding another clue on the map of life. These micro-learning brain training segments are designed to be a cross between a RANT and a MANTRA.
For the best possible results, listen to my morning RANTRAS daily until you feel no attachment to the old, unhelpful, emotions!
